


Touch Him

by FabulaRasa



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-23 01:34:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11979318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: A post-movie vignette in which Solo confronts Sanders.Still teetering right on the edge of slash.





	Touch Him

“I’ve taken the liberty of phoning your superiors and informing them of your new assignment to the UN,” Waverly said. “They have agreed with no difficulty, so you won’t have to worry about that.”

Solo raised his eyebrows. “Really,” he said. “Somehow I have a hard time believing that.”

“Well, in Sanders’ case, I will admit, I did have to exert a little persuasion. But once I had explained to him the importance of the work you and Kuryakin would be doing for U.N.C.L.E., the geopolitical significance of your contribution, of course he agreed immediately.”

“Of course,” Solo said skeptically. He could imagine what that conversation had been like. A shame he hadn’t been there, really, to hear Sanders splutter and fume and probably burst several blood vessels. The thought put a smile on his face and an extra crisp in his cuff. 

It wasn’t until he was lying in his bed that night that he really began to think about what it meant, being free. Not until the weight had lifted did he understand how firmly he had been bound. Something about clipping those shackles off made it easier to look at them, where before he had mostly avoided looking too closely. But now he was a free man. One well-placed phone call, and that was that. He was no longer in Sanders’ power. He had always thought of Sanders as a mild annoyance. Surprising to discover that in fact he had hated him. 

“I am going for meeting with KGB,” Kuryakin said, over toast the next morning. “Last meeting before they hand me over to UNCLE. You meet with your handler, yes?”

“Ah,” Solo said, setting down his coffee. “Probably not, no.”

“He must not be very good handler.”

“Why do you say that?”

Kuryakin shrugged. “You don’t seem to like him.”

“Is liking people part of our business?”

Kuryakin had gone back to his toast, offering no further comment. Solo considered his coffee. “He’s not my handler,” he said. “He’s my jailer. I worked for him instead of rotting in a prison cell. It’s not a fact he let me forget. Hard to believe that wasn’t in my KGB file.”

“You do not have file, Cowboy. We keep those for good spies, not American hacks.”

“Now now, Peril. No need to be testy simply because my file was encoded. They had to put things in writing to make sure no illiterate Russian spies would be able to understand them.”

Kuryakin grabbed another piece of toast on his way out, and leaned over to smack the back of Solo’s head. Solo sat there for some moments, quite stunned at the gesture. It wasn’t that it had been painful, at all: it was just that it had been playful. A perfectly normal, natural playful gesture. The sort one friend would give another. It was. . . confounding. 

But as it turned out, he did have one last chance to see Sanders. He was startled to walk out of his bedroom later that day and find Sanders standing there, jowly scowl firmly fixed in place, suit as rumpled and ill-fitting as ever. Solo tugged on his cuffs and gave the man a once-over.

“What a pleasant surprise,” he said.

“You,” Sanders growled. “I was supposed to meet Waverly. What the hell are you doing here?”

“These are my rooms. Waverly, I believe, is next floor up.”

Sanders grunted. He looked around with distaste, grunted again. “S’pose you’re pretty pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”

“Oh come now,” he said. “Let’s not pretend you’re sorry to be rid of me. We were a marriage forged in the armpit of hell and that’s a fact, but there’s no reason we can’t be collegial now that the divorce is final. Bygones and all that.”

“You fucking sodomitical prick,” Sanders snarled. Solo put his hands in his pockets. “You don’t belong in a cushy suite getting your cock sucked by a British lord, you belong rotting in jail and you know it. You know exactly what you fucking deserve.”

“I put my life on the line, for years,” he said, low and even. “Whatever my crimes may have been, I paid for them, many times over.”

“Shut your fucking mouth." Sanders edged closer, his unpleasant breath close enough to gust Solo's face. 

"You think Waverly’s gonna protect you forever, that what you think? Sooner or later you’re gonna get cut loose, and then I’m gonna be there. I’ll be waiting. That is gonna be a great fucking day, I tell you what. Right now you got ‘em all snowed, you got ‘em all thinking you’re really something special. But you and I know the truth, right? You and I both know you’re nothing but a fucking criminal, some jumped-up nickel-and-dime crook from the south Bronx whose Jew-whore of a mother couldn’t pick his daddy out of a police line-up, some faggot who sucks cock like an Electrolux if he thinks it’ll get him a five-spot. So you just enjoy this while you got it, you worthless piece of shit, because it ain’t what you’re gonna get in the end. In the end, you’re gonna be begging for that jail cell, but you ain’t gonna get it. What you’re gonna get is my boot in your nuts and a bullet in your faggot whore brain. You got that?”

“Congratulations, that’s about seven sentences more than I thought you capable of.”

The backhand lashed his face, landing with the full force of Sanders’ heavy-knuckled hand, the kind of blow that knocked the wind out for a second or so. When he regained focus, he saw only one thing: the barrel of a Luger P08 pressed to Sanders’ temple. 

And then he heard the cold metallic click of the pistol’s cock.

“Touch him again,” said Kuryakin. “Please.”

Solo dabbed carefully at his cheekbone, examining the trace of blood on his fingertips. Kuryakin had his weapon to the man’s temple, his finger on the trigger. Most alarming, there was a bit of a twitch to that hand. 

“Go on,” Kuryakin whispered. “Just once. Touch him. I am begging you.”

Sanders was breathing so hard he was a bit concerned the man might stroke out. One look at him told you he was probably five to seven years from a major cardiac event, and a Russian-made Luger P08 pressed to his head had probably moved that date closer by several years. 

Kuryakin lifted the barrel away, slowly, and Sanders’ beady eyes never left him. The minute that weapon was off him, he was headed for the door. Breathing audibly, practically panting in his terror. Probably running right back to his hotel to change his soiled underwear. Kuryakin was holstering the Luger.

It was odd that the room was silent, after it shut behind Sanders. He ought to say something – a flippant word of thanks, a casual joke. Kuryakin ought to be muttering something about Americans and their demented ways. But somehow neither of them was saying anything. Kuryakin went to the ice bucket that held the remains of their morning orange juice, pulled out the decanter, and wrapped several pieces of ice in a napkin. 

“I’m fine,” Solo said, finding his voice at last. Kuryakin said nothing. He put a finger on Solo’s jaw, tipped his head. He pressed the ice pack gently to Solo’s cheek. His eyes met Solo’s while he did it. They were extraordinary eyes, and they did not admit of any lie. How could a spy’s eyes be so ridiculously transparent? 

“I should have pulled trigger,” he murmured.

“It would have scotched us with Waverly.”

A twitch of that mouth. “We find something else to do. I have cousin in Siberia who raises reindeer. He is always looking for workers.”

“You think either one of us has the makings of a reindeer farmer?”

Kuryakin was still holding the ice pack to his cheekbone, still steadying his face. “I spent summer there once. I cannot describe smell. It gets into everything. My cousin is very good-looking man, very kind. His first wife left him after only three months. You know what she said to him? He told me this once, when he was drunk. She said, Volodya, every time I kiss you, it tastes like a fart.”

Solo tipped back his head and laughed, and Kuryakin smiled. Solo reached for the ice pack, and his fingers brushed Kuryakin’s. It was a stupid story, and not all that funny, but for some reason it struck him as hilarious – mainly the thought of Kuryakin spending an entire summer with the reindeer, and the earnest farmer. He wondered if it had registered with Kuryakin, some of what Sanders had said. The words he had used. He wondered if he ought to explain.

“You all right, Cowboy?”

“I’m fine. It was a backhand, not a bullet wound, and a clumsy one at that. I’ve had far worse.”

“You’ve had worse in the last ten days. We deserve vacation.”

“We do, and no mistake. Peril.”

“Yes?”

He hesitated. _Thank you_ seemed like such a simple thing to say, but he couldn’t quite get it out. In part he couldn’t put into words what he was thanking him for. It wasn’t as though he had needed rescuing from Sanders, exactly, whose paunchy middle he could have collapsed with a well-aimed blow. It was more the idea of what Kuryakin had done, than the thing itself. The man had put a gun to Sanders’ head, because he had raised his hand to Solo. He had been half an inch from pulling that trigger. That was not the way the world worked. The way the world worked was, there was the world on one side of the bright white line, and there was Solo on the other side of that line, alone. That was the way it had always been. And for the first time, someone had stepped across that line and stood beside him. They would be standing beside each other now, from here on out. That was what the click of the Luger’s barrel had meant. 

“I’m. . . glad you were around,” he finally said, and Kuryakin’s mouth gave that same twitch of smile as before.

* * *

“So that’s the end of that and no further trouble,” Waverly said to the three of them, over drinks on their balcony. “Your dossier there has all the information you’ll need for your new assignment, including the fascinating backstory of all our little difficulties in Cairo, which I’m trusting you lot can put right.”

They exchanged glances. “I thought you said Istanbul,” Solo said.

“Did I?”

“You did,” Gaby said.

“Hm. Must be going dotty, I suppose. Ah well, I meant Cairo. It’s quite pleasant this time of year, I hear.”

“It is August,” Kuryakin pointed out.

“The southern Med is at its best in August, trust me, you’ll adore it. Tickets are in the dossier, along with your covers, which I think you’ll really enjoy, if I do say so myself.”

“I don’t want to be architect.”

“Architect? Of course not, what a ridiculous idea, whoever came up with that? Anyway, I won’t spoil the surprise.” Waverly downed the last of his drink and set it back on the table. “Oh Solo,” he said. “I forgot to tell you, I had quite the lovely chat with your former employer yesterday. Truly one of nature’s noblemen, an absolute delight from first to last.”

“I thought you two might hit it off,” Solo said.

“Yes, can’t thank you enough for that. One thing, though, I couldn’t help noticing as we were chatting. He had a quite distinctive. . . odor, shall one say? Almost as though he had been rolling about in a barnyard. Or possibly, and I’m just guessing here, lost control of his bowels in a spectacular fashion shortly before our meeting.”

Kuryakin met his eyes, and there was the hint of a smile lurking in the corner of his mouth. Solo arched his brow at him and let himself hold that ice-blue gaze. “How peculiar,” he said.

“Yes, that’s the word I was looking for. Peculiar. Well. This world is full of peculiar things, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I would at that.”

“All right you three, I’ll expect to hear from you when you arrive at your respective check-in points, and then I suppose I’ll hear again when the job is done, hm? I’m not much for worrying, you’ll soon discover—trust to your own discretion and all that. Bank cards for your travel expenses are enclosed along with your passports and identity documents, but let’s not go wild in the duty-free shop, all right? I hear the pound is down against the geneih, and I wouldn’t want to be caught short at my tailor’s. Cheerio then, safe travels and all that, happy journeys, don’t forget to save the world while you’re at it. Oh, and Kuryakin.”

He had paused with his hand on the doorknob, and he tugged down his sunglasses for a long intent look at his agent. “Speaking of saving the world. Next time? Pull the damn trigger.”

Before any of them could respond, the balcony door had shut briskly behind him, and Waverly had vanished. “Was in der verdammte Hölle,” Gaby said. "What was he talking about?" She turned to Kuryakin, who just shrugged.

“The English are peculiar, Gaby,” Solo said. “You’ll soon learn.”

She crossed her arms. “Oh is that so.”

“Peculiar,” Kuryakin agreed. He had put on his sunglasses, turning himself into an impenetrable blank, but Solo knew he was not imagining it – there was the brush of eyes against his, even behind the lenses. 

“It’s like Waverly says,” Solo said. “It’s a peculiar world out there. Lucky for us, we’ve got each other.”

Gaby was glancing suspiciously between the two of them. Over her head, Kuryakin’s hint of smile remained in place. A peculiar world indeed, but no longer, perhaps, a lonely one. The thought of that was as disconcerting as it was exhilarating. Solo put on his own shades and examined the view. “Cairo, hm?” he said. “Sounds dreamy.”


End file.
